Monday, 24 August 2015

It's been a long old time since I did anything with this blog, so it's a bit anticlimactic to return for something relatively trivial, but... I'm selling some assorted DW merchandise on Amazon. Yep, pretty exciting, I know.

There's a couple of action figures, lots of DWMs (of various vintages), a smattering of VHSes (old school!), and some novels (including relative rarities like Bad Therapy, Eternity Weeps, and even an English Way of Death!) - all rather competitively priced, I might add.

Wednesday, 8 August 2012

Written by Terry Nation and Milton
Subotsky, directed by Gordon Flemyng, 1965

I’m a big fan of sixties Doctor Who, and especially of Hartnell. Therefore, you’d be forgiven for
expecting me to tow the party line when it comes to the Aaru movies (such as
there is even a fan consensus at all): that at best they’re a bit of fun, and
at worst a cartoonish Technicolor travesty of the original stories’ relatively unparalleled
realism and ‘grittiness’. And I do. I think they’re shit.

But, see, here’s the thing – I’d love, I’d
really love to like the films. I love apocrypha – the weird digressions and
convolutions that Doctor Who’s colossus-like straddling of numerous media inevitably
throws up. I like to be able to go, ‘Hey, you know what – I love the TV
originals’ committed approach (which makes their no-budget values pretty much
irrelevant), but this is something different’; I’d like to be able to embrace
the idea that these are a different thing, some bold, fun, deliriously
colourful digression from the norms of the canon. Well, let’s see, as I get my
blog-along on for Dr Who and the Daleks.

What’s majorly frustrating is that it should be FRICKING
AMAZING that Peter Cushing played the Doctor, in any capacity, but, though
it’s sweet for him to get to play cuddly, this dithery old duffer is so
far from his customary hawkish, dignified screen persona that it might as
well be anyone.

I get the logic of going down the human ‘Dr Who’ path, but
eschewing the series’ most iconic elements – the theme, the TARDIS
interior design and dematerialisation sound effect – just seems bizarrely
contrary (rights issues, perhaps?).

The protagonists’ absolutely total non-reaction to their arrival
on AN ALIEN PLANET firmly locates us within the cartoony tone the film
occupies, which has absolutely no time for even the most basic sense of
realism, let alone actual emotion or character development. In fairness,
that just highlights the original series’ (comparative) realism, and the
skills of the TV regulars. By contrast, no-one’s required to act here. It
kind of emphasises how miraculous it is that the series bothered to engage
with at least an approximation of the emotional trauma that being whirled
away through time and space by (in this case) your girlfriend’s
dementia-ridden grandfather might engender.

I was always chronically embarrassed by these films’ naffness
as a kid (and my family’s assumption that they must be like catnip to my
ming-mong soul). Unfortunately, I really haven’t loosened up on that view.
There’s total non-characterisation, non-drama.

Okay, this isn’t meant to
be the Doctor we know, but I find his characterisation at its most
compelling when the series plays on his ambiguities, as in The Daleks, which makes dramatic meat
out of his endangering the TARDIS crew through his selfishness – something
that’s totally skipped over here. Like everything, a potential moment of
conflict is neutered by this kiddie bullshit. By contrast to Hartnell’s
early crotchety and irascible old gentleman, a loveable Eagle-reading granddad is a bit
dull. Similarly, they even fudge the dangling-Thal suicide/self-sacrifice
(“Oh, he’s alright!”). So toothless.

Roy Castle fucking around with some comedy doors is pretty weak
anyway, but its unfunniness is emphasised by much of the film’s lack of
score.

Tinfoil on the walls?!

The Daleks do look
ace (you might want to savour that statement; it might be the only positive
one), and the forest is pretty good (in a studio-bound, luridly-lit kind
of way), but, really, shouldn’t Aaru have been embarrassed that for all
their “on the big screen… in colour!” posturing, the sets, while
impressively sizeable, are far tackier and crapper than the small screen production
design?

So flat, so undramatic.
It’s just stupid and dull. I imagine this might be what it feels like to
be a not-we watching Doctor Who
in general.

I like trash – ie,
things that are consciously setting themselves up to be about cheap
thrills – at least, if they’re well done. But this manages the feat of
having zero dramatic value or depth, but while not even being fun either.
Even a bag of white chocolate and raspberry cookies to dunk in my tea hasn’t
improved my goodwill; maybe getting blitzed on red wine might’ve done the
trick. At least the Thals’ Liz Taylor makeup might’ve been funny that way.
(Well, there’s a plan for Daleks –
Invasion: Earth 2150 A.D.) I’d’ve preferred to see Cushing tackle the
role in dramatic mode (he’s far more Doctorish in stuff like The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires),
but failing that I sort of wish, as it is a travesty of the original,
they’d gone the whole hog and ramped up the camp to the proportions of the
Adam West Batman, or at least
B-movie thrills’n’spills.

So static.

Hard not to see it as a bit of a travesty of the original.

Roy Castle bumps into things! Comedy gold!

I reread the DWM Time
Team’s comments on the movies recently, so a lot of their comments are
still fresh in my mind, yet I’m failing to get their appreciation for
Roberta Tovey’s Susan. I mean, she is the only member of the cast who
isn’t a total moron, but still.

There’s some painted landscapes the artificiality of which is
quite delish, verging on an almost Fantastic
Planet look, bu-ut…

None of it really makes sense, which is pretty damningly indicative
of a fundamental lack of care or even respect for the audience: why does
‘Dr Who’ live in a bungalow but dress like a Victorian? Why did he make
‘TARDIS’ in the form of a police box?

The TV version (take your pick of titles) is overlong and, obviously, in terms of editing, etc, seems more
dated than this; but it’s so much more impressive in its integrity and
conviction. This has got higher production values but – not that this
should surprise anyone – what does it matter if it’s so flat and moronic, and
populated by blue-skinned ponces?

…The Chasewould have been fun on the silver
screen, though.

Final verdict: Interminable. Toothless. Invasion: Earth might be put on hold, I
need a few months to recover myself.

Friday, 22 June 2012

The Dragon's Claw comic collection is a bit
blah overall - the stories are the sort of light silliness you'd expect of a
seventies comic tie-in, rather than the sort of thing actually delivered in The
Iron Legion (notably, The Star Beast and the titular story). So I can't really
be bothered to review it. It's all stories which amount to 'the Doctor goes to
a planet where the inhabitants turn out to be butterfly people,' or, 'he
encounters some cannibals and helps some other people get away, but who don't really
get away'. Hmm.

Junk-Yard Demon, by contrast, is something else. I know I’m behind the curve
here… by thirty-one years (the closest I’ve got to it previously being an Adrian Salmon-drawn sequel in a nineties annual),
but - it is perfect. It's a snappy story, yet has an actual plot (albeit a
slight one – but which fits the length rather than feeling like a truncated or
unfinished vignette). Considering its brevity, the incidental characters -
scrap merchants Flotsam and Jetsam and their wind-powered robot, Dutch – just work: they’re effortlessly memorable,
with idiosyncrasies that show up the deficiencies of characters elsewhere in
the collection, like Prometheus (a mythological figure... in space, for no good
reason), whose only defining feature is his lack of clothes and perfect pecs.

Probably the story's most apparent advantage though is Mike McMahon's scratchy,
stylised, idiosyncratically proportioned and exaggerated art - which is in
revelatory contrast to Dave Gibbons' precise, always-impressive but, at this
stage, slightly less fresh art. Thanks to McMahon, something that could have
been unassuming is instead – let’s say it – freaking beautiful. Even in terms
of layout, the use of numerous small panels is remarkable, and impressively
used along with silent panels which create filmic pauses in the action.

The whole thing – art and story – still stands up today; it's funny and cool
and a bit offbeat, and feels like a one-off, whereas a lot of the rest of
Dragon’s Claw is quite flat and very much of its (slightly naïve) time. (I hope
future issues of Vworp Vworp!might focus on Junk-Yard Demon…)

And all this is in spite of the slightly odd Tenth Planet-cum-Moonbase design of
the Cyberman, the use of exclamation marks for nearly all of its dialogue, and
its "Cybernaut" controller, which should make the strip seem horribly
apocryphal and unofficial.

The Neutron Knights is the only other story in this collection that really
stands up with the best of these earliest strips – strangely, because its King-Arthur-and-Merlin-in-the-future
premise should be bollocks – but even that is little more than a scenario
rather than a complete story. But with Junk-Yard Demon, the art, the dialogue,
everything seems a cut above - one of those depressingly rare occasions of a
story being as much of a classic as its reputation - bold and instantly
memorable. Love at first sight with this one.

Tuesday, 12 June 2012

So, was it me, or is this basically total shite? That it
manages to be simplistic yet somehow still laboured, is, I suppose, a triumph
of sorts. But it’s entirely lacking in danger, far too well-equipped with
wildly hokey concepts (piloting a disguised-wood spaceship thing through the
vortex with the power of a mother's maternal instincts?!), and it even looks
massively cheap - all those big, plain sets feel a bit… season seventeen.

And was it strictly necessary to
CG the aerial views of the forest? Unfortunately, that says a lot about the level of
realism; it probably would've seemed more awkward, in such a cartoon, to have
shown some stock footage of the Black Forest or whatever, such was the
episode's distance from any sense of realism (I don't mean reality, rather any sense that disbelief
could be suspended about the whole premise - acid rain to melt trees which act
as power sources?! WTF? Once again, there’s a disappointing sense of Moffat
hurriedly and imperfectly filling in the gaps of a concept which was more
important that its justification). Even the acting was shit (Arabella! Holy
god).

The only spark it mustered was the scene on the Ponds’
doorstep – mainly, it must be said, due to Amy – which is odd as that felt
quite inorganically tacked-on anyway. Most damning though is its
total lack of story, the plot amounting to the Doctor arriving (alright, in
this case he was already in situ); something bad happening; and then… the Doctor
not even solving the situation - it simply progresses to a point where it all
sorts itself out. That's IT. The story amounted to a walk through a wood. I
don't like CS Lewis (who does?!), but at least The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, plundered here for its
iconography if nothing else, had the time and space for a plot that involved
more than four characters, and more than one situation.

I’ve spoken before
about how much I like low-key episodes, but, oddly, despite its small cast, I wouldn’t
categorise this as one: it's definitely leaning toward Moffat's occasional
flirtations with his predecessor’s more ‘Superman’
approach to the series (the in-orbit opening; the journey through the vortex),
yet the fact that it has so few characters just makes it feel sort of inadequate
or unfinished, like they could only afford to do it on a shoestring. And, like
the simple plot nevertheless feeling totally forced, even given the small size
of its cast, none of them really get to do very much, much less have the
opportunity to ring true as real people.

I really love Claire Skinner, but even she just got to play
a less funny version of her Outnumbered
persona. Which is telling, actually; she basically doesn’t have a character,
and isn’t presented as being important to the Doctor in a way other one-off
seasonal companions like Astrid were; that the Doctor goes running back to Amy
at the end just reinforces the idea that she is where Moffat’s heart (...or
whatever) lies, and makes me a bit dubious about how well he's going to cope with
her eventual departure and replacement.

The comparison to Caves
(which Moffat might regret making), in purely story terms, does TDTWATW no favours. Think of the
characters in that: Jek, Salateen (and his double), the colonel, the bounty
hunter dudes, Morgus, the president... Yeah, yeah; I know it’s longer, but
there aren't even equivalent roles here - everyone's a goodie: the mother, the
kids (companion-surrogates); even Bill Bailey's posse are mild-mannered even
when threatening interrogation, and even the nominal monsters aren't bad.
WHERE'S THE TENSION, bitch?!

There are some nice ideas, for sure - well, namely the idea
of trees growing together into a disguised tower - but co-opted into a 'sci-fi'
environment (the conspicuous nods to Caves didn't help this) just seems awkward
and ridiculous – ‘It's the future!’ has come to be used as justification for
trees spawning fairytale wooden monarchs, growing into towers apparently made
of stone, metal (and glass), and expelling their souls. (God, since when has DW had any truck with such a wanky
concept as souls? I know it's just being used as shorthand, but I miss the
series’ formerly relentless rationalist religion-bashing.)

And then there's the fact that, despite its simplicity, the
plot still didn't WORK: much is made of Madge being a suitable receptacle for
the trees’ ‘souls’... yet they're dumped into space at an undisclosed point
during the journey (rather than finding a home on earth?). And no word at all
on how exactly the trees’ spaceship/golf ball thing found its way into the time
vortex - what, the power of Madge's desire to get home? (It didnt even NEED to
time travel, for the trees' sake.) Give me a break. Why is Doctor Who lately so riddled with full-on ‘magical’ explanations from the
love-saves-the-day school.

Also, the lifts from A
Matter of Life and Death were unfortunate, as the association simply served
as a reminder of something actually packed with ingenuity, creativity,
imagination, emotion, and a satisfactory plot...

God, I found that
really dispiriting. I don't LIKE specials; I don't like the idea of a ‘Christmassy’
Doctor Who story automatically being
magical, but equally, I don't think it should be that difficult to achieve that
confluence. In advance, the elements of the story - the wartime setting, the
old house, the Narnian forest, seemed to have a lot of potential richness, but
in practice that's lost in the story's prevailing tone of glibness. I think
that's what’s been bugging me about this phase of DW: its increasingly one-note comic/smug tone. All the Doctor's ‘I
know’ bollocks, and still more self-indulgent references to ‘timey-wiminess’
and all that. It’s just becoming a bit... painful. There's no danger, no
originality...

I mean, I realise this is a bit harsh, as there were some
stories I really liked in the last season, but... it was all a bit depressing,
really. Which sucks especially because it shouldn’t be hard to do a Christmas
story. Creepy old house. Snow. That should write itself. Obviously it's a hard
balance to strike, as neither Davies nor Moffat have ever quite nailed it.

I'm even dubious about the Doctor's
positioning as goofy Santa, providing the children with hammocks and rotating
Christmas trees. For a nominally moral series, I'd hope that it might engage
with a less self-involved Christmas message: helping others, no...? It’s okay,
we have remote-control armchairs.

Thursday, 3 May 2012

Every time I sodding well say I’m going to try to get back into
the habit of updating this site, I… totally fail to do so. Soz. (I’ve been spending more time on a collaborative film review blog what I've started with a friend, Caramels & Kerosene – which will include illustrations and
everything, eventually.) But I keep getting urges to watch, like, Time and the Rani, so maybe the time has
come for a revival. I’ll post that motherfucking Doctor, the Witch and the Wardrobe review soon, I promise. And then
I can do something more interesting.

Friday, 9 March 2012

You might have noticed I’ve neglected this
site a little recently (in favour of Wild Horses of Fire!) – though the idea of
anyone noticing may be wishful thinking; is this thing on?!

I have to admit to a certain amount of
apathy to this season; I like these characters, and, as I’ve repeatedly said,
the prevailing tone Moffat’s brought to the series in much more my bag than it
was under Davies… However, there’s a glibness to the series too – it’s almost
never convincingly serious or authentically emotional – which I find quite
disappointing, and makes me miss the perhaps more successful engagement with
the regulars as real people under Davies. Therefore it’s been a bit of a
stuggle to get round to posting all these reviews – which is particularly a
shame as I have a million billion other reviews to put up afterwards.

But - okay, so: The Wedding of River Song.

I know it’s kind of Moffat’s thing to have
certain tropes that he reuses, but – haven’t we been here before? The death of
time, creating a messed-up unreality with the Doctor/TARDIS as the epicentre. I
quite like his wide-ranging thing, but, strangely, this story left me a bit
cold. It’s nifty, lots of things come together nicely, it ranges all over the
universe, but… well: seen it. It’s funny, under Davies (ohh, that doesn’t bear
thinking about), Moffat’s stories were reliably the best of their seasons, but,
as showrunner, his stories – at least this season – have been at the other end
of the scale. They have the big events and twists, and the ambition, but they
just haven’t been satisfying to me.

In fact, I like ideas like that of River visiting
her mum and dad in between previous adventures and found the simple link back
to Flesh and Stone more satisfying than, say, the cheat of the Doctor’s ‘death’.
Oh. A shapechanging robot. That seems like a work of desperate convenience on
the part of Moffat, and, where the whimsy of the Tessalectas fitted in the
mid-season opener, it seems a bit shonky in relation to a big universe-spanning
death-of-the-Doctor narrative. I mean, surely that’s a bit below Moffat? Or has
he started second-guessing his audience so much that he’s starting to rely on simple
solutions cos no-one’d expect it? Whatever – it does feel like a cheat in a way
that River’s revival of the Doctor in Let’s Kill Hitler didn’t.

Hmm, River. She’s a funny one – much as I
like her, the schematics of her timeline and where she fits into the Doctor’s
world kind of overshadow her significance as a character. I think, perhaps,
once the series itself isn’t so based around the various revelations of her
life, it’ll be easier to see her purely as a memorable addition to the Doctor’s
world – as a recurring figure, she’s kind of up there with the Brigadier; the
recurring friend who know him that much more than anyyone else.

Ever since Silence of the Library, which immediately established her as a
significant character, I was concerned that the scale and scope of the
relationship suggested there would be undermined slightly by the relatively few
conventional adventure encounters they were ever likely to share on-screen –
but, at the point we’re at now, where they’re both equally familiar with each
other, it’s fun to speculate on the scale of the relationship they share during
her nights.

Having read other reviewers’ takes on the
finale – and the series in general – I feel a bit churlish; I forget that my
underlying appreciation for the current regulars may not always come out (River
especially is perhaps one of the most fascinating and effective additions to
the Doctor’s world, with the idea of his marrying his ‘bespoke psychopath’ being
quite genius), and, equally, even if it may not have sustained the dizzy
heights of some of his earlier, standalone stories, we’re extraordinarily lucky
to have a man of Moffat’s audacious imagination at the reigns.

I did
really hate the mashed-up history, though; it’s churlish, but, it really seemed
a pretty limited history. A sort of week junior-school-curriculum take on the
scope of something like Philip Purser-Hallard’s City of the Saved.

And as for the ‘Doctor who?’ thing – okay,
I get that it’s nice that this is being given significance within the fictive reality
of the show, but I just hope Moffat has more of a plan than the slightly
abortive ‘Cartmel Masterplan,’ which planned to add mystery in the same way,
but which, one speculates, never had any actual answers to deliver. At least
Moffat’s built in the caveat that it’s a question that should never be
answered. That doesn’t make it very appealing as a season-spanning tease,
though, but who knows…

Thursday, 12 January 2012

Apologies for the lack of recent updates (I've been posting more on my film/TV blog, Wild Horses of Fire!) - however, The Wedding of River Song and The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe reviews will be forthcoming in the probably-quite-immediate future. And after that I've got a bazillion other reviews lined up, of all manner of Who-ish marvellousness - so fear not!